Parliamentary Sketch Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald

One of the dark arts political staffers spend their time practising is the compiling of ''partials'' - photocopied cheat sheets full of politicians' old quotes that have been squirrelled away for an opportune moment.

The quotes are compiled to demonstrate the hypocrisy or idiocy of their political opponents.

Both sides do it - they know that the best kind of political gotcha is to catch out a politician by regurgitating his or her words at a timely moment.

So this week, when the government changed its mind, again, and abolished the $15 carbon floor price that was to have underpinned the emissions trading scheme, scheduled to begin in 2015, the opposition pounced.

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As soon as the floor price announcement was made (one which, I suspect, the average voter doesn't care about or is confused by), the ''partials'' came out.

They showed the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, were very much in favour of a carbon floor price until very recently.

According to the opposition, this week's announcement was yet another volte-face to add to Gillard's pre-election carbon tax ''lie'', its entire asylum seeker policy suite and its change of mind on company tax cuts.

In August, Combet told Sky television ''we are committed to the arrangements we have legislated'' and, last September, Gillard argued the case for the floor price and the carbon price cap.

The floating carbon price is too distant and too hypothetical for most voters to worry about, so I doubt the government will pay a heavy price for this latest change of tack.

But it lends more grist to the opposition's mill. The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and his frontbench have built a very strong case against the Gillard government based on its inconsistencies, its policy reversals and its changes of mind.

Mind-changing is something we punish very severely in modern politics. The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is fleeing from his ''flip-flopper'' image. The US President, Barack Obama, copped it for changing his mind on gay marriage. And for her carbon tax backflip, the Prime Minister has paid dearly in polling and internet trolling.

Do we care? Should we? Politicians are people and people change their minds. All the time. Sometimes for very good reasons. Only the intractable, the stubborn and the stupid refuse to ever change their mind or to consider evidence that might dilute the moral purity of their arguments.

So why do we hate political mind-changers so much?

Moral attitudes tend to be the most difficult things to budge, say behavioural psychologists who study attitude change, because we associate moral attitudes strongly with identity.

Politicians are particularly vulnerable to this - Abbott and the Coalition have a ''tough on asylum seekers'' moral brand. Gillard and her government are morally associated with ''sharing the benefits of the mining boom''.

If we were in the US, this would be called socialism by conservatives, whose identity is based on their moral opposition to wealth redistribution.

When people change their moral attitudes, we suspect them because it's as though they are shape-shifting. If morality is identity, then you can't change your morals without also changing your face.

But people do get away with it, of course. People become vegetarians or drop their opposition to the death penalty. Some come around to gay marriage, although sadly not the Prime Minister.

One of the most widespread moral changes of recent years has been among the Left on asylum seekers. Many left-wingers who were once opposed to the offshore processing of asylum seekers have changed their moral stance. Is this hypocrisy or a triumph of reason?

According to Timothy D. Wilson, an American psychology professor who has written a book entitled Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change about why people change their minds and behaviour, people will change their ideas and accept you changing yours if your backstory is strong enough. When it comes to a change of attitude, people will always be more convinced by stories than statistics.

It makes sense to any student of human behaviour - if you're introduced to a character who moves through a narrative arc, you're likely to identify with the character and find a way to fit them into your world view.

Abbott changed his views on paid parental leave but was able to tell a story about why he did so. Gillard changed her views on the urgent need for a carbon tax but has so far been unable to tell a coherent story about why she did.

There is another way, according to Wilson. There are some fields in which we encourage people to change their minds, or at least to be open to changing their minds.

Scientists are allowed to change their minds, as are juries and doctors. In these fields, we recognise that there is a huge public interest in allowing people to examine new evidence as it arises, to react intelligently to changes in circumstances and to backtrack when they have good reason to do so.

We should allow our politicians the same indulgence. We should let them change their minds, as long as they have told us a good enough story about why they did so.

Elsewhere this week, the Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, this week ruled out increasing the dole, although he acknowledged it would be tough getting by on $245 a week.

Why, he found it hard enough to make ends meet on his ministerial salary, he said.

Shorten was roundly mocked - unless you're Kanye West or a Saudi prince, $330,000 a year is generally considered good coin.

I have spent more than $245 on a dress. I am sure Shorten would never be so frivolous with his cash but I bet he, like most of us, would struggle to survive on that weekly sum.